Maybe I'm not enjoying Laurell's way of writing lately. So much of the book is descriptive text and so little of it is plot/story line. Sure we need to see Anita struggling to juggle her inner demons and loving relationships with new powers and monsters to kill, but I feel the pace of the story slows to crawl while every scene is described in profound detail and every character's looks embellished right down to the curls of hair. The author has written other books in this series that have taken our heroine in an almost James bond style action, pace and romance. I hope the author can reproduce some of her past glorious work in the next seeries of Anita Blake novels.